WILDERNESS has lost a key battle. With one April 11 announcement, U.S. Interior Secretary Gale Norton has rolled back wilderness protection for 2.87 million acres of public land in the West, including 35,000 acres in California.

By law, only Congress can designate lands as wilderness. But when citizens complained that Congress was unaware of all the lands deserving wilderness protection, the Interior Department listed them, concluding the inventory in 1991. Conservationists disputed the list and recruited volunteers to survey, on foot if necessary, potential wilderness areas. Under the Clinton administration, many of those lands were set aside administratively as wilderness study areas, pending congressional action to designate them permanently as wilderness.

Without study status, the federal government is free to lease timber, mineral or grazing rights on public lands, effectively disqualifying them from consideration as wilderness.

Norton's policy switch is the result of a legal settlement with the state of Utah. Utah had sued the Interior Department when then-Secretary Bruce Babbitt included 3 million acres of federal land in Utah wilderness study areas. The suit, inactive for five years, was amended last month.